This is the first story that I've written on the Nifty Archive. It's a fantasy fiction that includes mythical creatures such as trolls and witches and fairies, pixies and centaurs and (possibly) vampires. I suspect it will include romantic acts of sexual congress eventually on in the tale between characters of the same or different sexes. This isn't real, but it is only a storybook told from the point of view of the writer, me, who is also the Enchanter; hence the title "The Enchanter's Storybook".
Set in a medieval world, abundant with magic and fictitious creatures, this story is about Marcus Mallow and his ascent through the dark outer world of his hidden human village of Rocky Pass.
If you are under-aged or lawfully restrained to be reading this material, please leave. Thank you.
Finally, if you wish to understand the plot, I urge you to read previous chapters. You wouldn't start a book by reading the seventh chapter, so don't start this series reading the seventh chapter.
And, I may also need to add that the last chapter was named Chapter Six as a mistake. What should be Chapter Six is what would be Chapter Five. But because it is named Chapter Six, I have named this chapter Chapter Seven, even though it should really be Chapter Six, to stop any further confusion. So please know the story has no gaps, it is just because of a naming mistake of which I take the fault for. Thank you.
Now to start the seventh chapter of the tale.
The Enchanter's Storybook: Chapter Seven
The three had trudged the stony hills for days, uncountable days. They trailed over them and around them, left and right, up and down, for days and nights both.
Of food on the hills, there was very little. Darius had roamed ahead many times to collect wild juicy berries and to find any kind of fruit that there was, but all he returned with were sun-kissed blueberries and poisonous night-apples. And oft a time Varia would stroll off on her own and return hours later with hares or rabbits, foxes or pigeons, anything that was truly edible. She would roast the meat over a conjured blue sea of fire and flame, adding herbs and weeds she had acquired through the journey. Marcus had been unsure of tasting her food at first, but found her meat quite delectable. It was slick and greasy with juices that frothed in the heat of the odd blue fire, and turned crispy to a golden brown. Marcus had once asked her why her fire was blue, and not orange, but Varia only claimed that it "magicked the flavours", to have Marcus shrug at her casual response. Once he had tasted it, however, it had just the right amount of flavour and spice, and the perfect amount of salt and herb. It may have been the best food Marcus had ever tried.
Varia had counted a full turn of the moon since their first encounter on Mount Skull, back half a world away in the Pass. The time hadn't exactly flown by, yet Marcus felt it was only yesterday that he roamed their dusty little village. He would never had known it, but that village was the last seed of mankind, the remnants of their once almighty empire. Now, they were nothing and thought extinct, hiding behind hills and forests, deserts and mountains. Yet that made him wonder things. If mankind had so secretly survived, the same miracles could be said for delirious dragons and gargantuan giants. The same could be said for all beings that had been scoured from the earth.
On their first night of not being locked inside of a cold and horribly hard cage, Varia had told him, "Your kind always seem to surprise people."
"How so?" he had asked her.
She replied, "Well, for a start, mankind surprised all when they attempted to invade the Witchlands a thousand years ago. Then they surprised us by opposing all magic. And what do they do next? They go extinct. And, what I find most surprising of all, they are found in an old dusty town at the edge of the world."
"That is just happenstance," he murmured back, not entirely certain of how to reply to the witch. He just looked at her in the cyan blue light of the fire dancing shadows across her palely perfect skin. Varia's eyes did not leave his, and the grayness of them irked him in a way he would not soon forget.
"Well, then there is you, sweet Marcus. How you had darkness and gave me immortal life, how just a thirteen winters old boy could actually give immortality as easily as giving an apple. How you can take the lives of two well-bred, fully-grown trolls of the Mud Order of Assassins, as well. It is remarkable. I am surprised by you even now, sweet boy. Your darkness is... why, it is fierce and unstoppable. Even now, immortal as I am, I fear you," she said sweetly, smiling her cherry red lips, revealing her perfectly white teeth.
Ever since that night, Marcus had felt different. He had felt a power inside of him, filling him up. It was a strange sensation, like he was unstoppable, like he had drowned in the water of the gods and awoken as one himself.
Darius, however, had opposed his supposed darkness, and Varia alongside it. Marcus knew he was just being protective, but to have his only friend hate what was a part of him made him hurt. His friend's hatred for his darkness cut him deeper than any sword or weapon could.
"It isn't true," Darius once said sternly. "There is no darkness. Everyone knows mankind are pure, that we aren't cursed with this... sickness."
"It is no sickness, dear boy," Varia said. She snapped her eyes from Marcus and pierced them onto Darius. She looked him over like he was only a meal, like he was nothing. She sniggered at him and raised herself from the grass. "It is power. Darkness may not rule the world where you come from, but it rules this world; and this is the only world that matters."
"A witch, an immortal, and a liar. You deserve to be dragged back down to Hell from whence you came, witch."
"I've told you, sweet fighter. The Devil himself saw fit to spit me back up into the world. Not even Hell would take me," she laughed. "You should care to remember that the next time you raise a sword to me, boy."
"I'm not a boy!" he had exclaimed, raising himself from the ground.
Varia had encircled him like a hawk, only looking into the flickering flames of the deep blue fire. It was roasting a sow they'd found hours before sunset. Then, though, the sky had set and glimmered with the holy light of the crescent moon. It's starry companions guarded it in the sky, shining in the blackness of night. Marcus felt reassured by the moon and stars, but he couldn't understand why. They made him feel somewhat safe.
"You are thirteen winters old, Darius, as is Marcus. Thirteen winters. I have lived eleven winters more than you, and I will live to see a thousand more. You are small, petty, you are nothing. You are a boy, and killing a half-dead troll does not change that. Manhood does not come over night, and the gods will make no exception for you, foolish boy," she spat, circling herself around him, murmuring the word "boy" over and over.
"I'm not a boy," he repeated, in more of a whisper, before retracting back to the ground, humiliated by his defeat.
Varia turned, her black leather bodysuit glowing in the moonlight, and sat back down beside Marcus. Marcus could not see Darius through the blue flames, yet he could feel his sadness. He felt pity for his friend, and anger for the witch, yet he knew they were just being silly. He understood that Darius had been raised to hate sorcery, and that Varia was raised to think mankind were scum ridden from the earth long ago. It seemed quite befitting that they were to be argumentative towards each other at first. But he was not one to sink to their level so easily, and without provocation.
"Is the meat cooked yet?" he asked, trying to blanket the anger that so clearly filled the air. He could quite literally feel the tension coursing through the wind this night, and it felt putrid. It felt dense and sickly, like smoke, like it might choke him if given the chance.
"Almost," Varia replied, poking at it with a wooden stick. She turned it on the spit and sprinkled green devils of herb onto it, which seemed to make the fire purr in content. "A few minutes should do it."
"Varia," Marcus said, after a long moment of disturbing silence. "Does it hurt?"
"Does what hurt, sweetling?" she replied vaguely, poking at the meat with sore eyes. She watched the mouth-watering grease leak from the meaty chunks and dribble into the fire, causing an uproar of blue and boil and blaze.
"Dying. When they killed you, and when you stabbed yourself. Did it hurt?".
"With the trolls, the pain was unbearable. I felt my throat open like slicing butter, I felt the blood pouring out of me. I felt dizzy and sick. And once I had died, there was... there was darkness, lights, a thousand lights, all around me. Flames, and clouds, and grass, everything was motionless. I was in Purgatory, awaiting my final judgment. That must have been when you gifted me in immortal life. From then on, I died twice, you know."
"How?"
"Starvation. The trolls took the supplies with them, so I had to cross mountains and desert without water or food. I felt the pain, the emptiness of my stomach and the dryness of my mouth. Yet when I jumped onto Darius's sword, I felt no blood. I felt the pain, for certain. It was ticklish, if anything. But it could not harm me in the end.
She stabbed the stick deep into the meat and ripped it from the spit, slapping it into her lap and tearing it with her hands. The grease trickled down her fingers stickily, as she passed pieces over to Marcus and Darius to try. Turning t each finger, the witch sucked the grease from her hand with ease. To Marcus, her food was as zesty and splendid as her last meals: hot and spicy, yet mild and tasty all the same. Varia was a fine brewer of foods and concoctions.
Varia tore into her own piece like a savage, and Darius set his aside. He preferred the berries he had picked to the food she had cooked. Marcus assumed Darius thought it must have been poisoned or spelled, and didn't want to take the chance. But Marcus tore off little bits strip-by-strip, down to the bone, and lay it gently against the floor.
"It grows late, sweetlings," Varia sounded, rubbing her grey eyes sleepily. "If we are to reach the nearest village tomorrow, I suggest we rest well for the walk on the morrow." She turned over and lay down on the grass, faced away from the boys, and soundlessly fell to sleep.
It was silent for a few moments, silent enough for Marcus to hear the chirping crickets and hooting owls. He heard the call of crows and the distant howls of wolves, he heard the winds whistle, the blades of grass blow with its force, the tree leaves rustle gloomily. Everywhere around him, he heard the call of nature.
"Why did you want to go with her?" Darius asked so suddenly, his voice somewhat sad and somber.
"Why do you ask?"
"I want to know. I just wanted to go home, but I couldn't just leave you with her," he replied, nodding over at her sleeping corpse. "So I said I would go. Why did you want to, though?"
"The Pass is shit, Darius. I've seen more exciting things in the last month than I have in thirteen years in that petty little village. That was why I chose not to go back."
"That doesn't mean you should leave everything behind," he replied, his voice even more mournful than before. "Your mother and father, my mother and father. Your grandmother Ellisai. What will they think?"
"My parents probably don't know I'm gone, and Granny Ellisai will mourn me but she'll move on. She's strong. I care about them, but I care about myself more."
"How can you say that? They'll think you died, that we fell off of Mount Skull, or something. We have to return someday. And when we do, what will we tell them? Oh, mother, father, granny, I do apologize, but you see, I wanted to dance with fairies and brew potions with witches more than live with you."
"I won't return," Marcus replied sternly, his face being as serious as he could make it. "I have no reason to return."
Darius stood and turned away. "And you think your grandmother Ellisai won't come after you? There's no body, and Ellisai isn't stupid, Marcus! She'll come looking for you, and you know it! She loves you. You have every reason to return." He paced off into the darkness.
"Well where are you going now?" Marcus shouted after him.
"Berry-picking," he excused. His figure slid into the darkness and became unseen.
Marcus, feeling rather scornful, turned onto his side and slid into a brief slumber midst grass and mud and rock.
He dreamed of darkness, swirling like smoke and sneakier than a thief. It twisted and shook, it screamed and screeched, it tore and ripped like paper. From the tears dripped blood, thick and dense and red. It poured through the cracks and formed puddles of redness and disgust that puked into itself like a whirlpool. The darkness was washed away with splatters of red, and red was flushed away by a sudden wave of water that churned and frothed as it hit the shores of small and pink sandy beach.
He shot up and woke immediately, breathing heavily and panting fiercely.
Varia looked over at him from the fire curiously. Her hair was slightly more tousled than usual, but her eyes were still an awful grey. "Bad dream?"
"Horrible," he muttered, his sight slightly obscured by the gleam of the morning sun. He could see it was nearing noon, with a cloudy cyan sky and peculiar white doves soaring through the ivory of the clouds in earnest. He sighed.
Marcus looked around the camp. There was only the smoky remains of the night's fire, and Varia tending to it in her regular black leather bodysuit. He scanned the whole grassed, hill-filled landscape for Darius, but he couldn't find him. He checked again, yet the boy was still as unseen as last night when he slid into the shadows under the moon.
"Where is he?" he asked Varia, slightly worried. Surely, he thought, it wouldn't take him this long to pick berries.
"Who, dear?" she asked, absently. She sounded very unconcerned with Marcus that morning, with anything but the fire seemed out of focus for her.
"Darius! Where is he, Varia?" he repeated, rising. He was growing more anxious each time he spoke, and each time he looked around to find his friend not there.
"How am I supposed to know? I should not have to keep track of some foolish boy each time he wanders."
"We need to find him!" Marcus insisted, stomping out the tiny blue specks of flame remaining in the pyre. "Now, Varia, now!"
He was shaking a little, and he wasn't too surprised. Where did Darius go? Back home? He didn't usually lie, especially not to Marcus. Something was odd. Darius was his friend, and he wouldn't just leave him. He loved him, and he wanted him by his side. He wanted to smell his strawberry hair and look upon his flawless face and into his hazel eyes. Where was he?
"Fine! Calm down, would you? I do not take orders, Marcus, and you would do well to remember that. Scan ahead, I'll pack up the meat and whatnot."
Marcus did as he was told, and proceeded wearily in the direction Darius had crept into the darkness the night before. It was just plain, green, grassy hills as far as he could see. He trudged on through for the better part of the morning before Varia caught up with him, alarming him of the marshlands approaching. Bogs and marshes were scattered across the hills like puddles on a concrete pathway. Now and then, he almost stood in them and sank into the quicksand, and would have drowned if Varia had not saved him each time.
"If I am not wrong, I came this way on my journey into Rocky Pass," she told him. "And if Darius came this way last night, there would be little chance he did not step into the marshes. Even in daylight they are difficult to find."
"He isn't dead," Marcus insisted. "He isn't!"
"If he survived the marshes, he might have made it to the Maude Meadows before sunrise, and probably passed the Great Maude Lake before noon."
"I doubt that. He's probably going home."
"Home is in the other direction, Marcus, dear," she replied dimly. "in this direction, he is either at the bottom of the marshlands or he's in the Maude Meadows."
The hills and marshes and bogs ended in the afternoon. They passed through the last of them when the sun had begun painting the sky a bloody red. After that, they came into what Varia had called the Maude Meadows. The grass had turned from green to a fiery orange, the leaves a rustle of brown and orange and red. The flowers were red too. Roses, hyacinths, daffodils, all were red in the meadow.
Varia had told him a story while they crossed through the redness of the world. She said that three thousand years ago, three beings passed the meadow. Two lovers; one man and one witch. The third was a terrifying troll. She said that the lovers came across the troll, and it robbed the lovers of anything valuable. Yet, when the human stood up to the troll, he was murdered. The witch would be left alone forever, and cried a pool of red tears that was now the Great Maude Lake. The troll found her tears so amusing that it swam in the lake of the lovers' tears and drowned, and the witch still sobbed. Her grief turned the meadow red with love and hate, and it had remained so sorrowful since.
"Or so the villagers nearby say," she finished.
"Varia, I do not care about this red death valley. I want Darius. Where is he?"
"I don't know, sweet boy! Perhaps he was led astray by poltergeists or was lost to the nightwolves. Perhaps he swam in the Great Maude Lake and drowned, like the troll, or perchance he slipped into a marsh. No doubt he is fine and simply picking berries in an orchard not far from here. I may be immortal, and I may be powerful, but I do not know everything. I do not know where Darius is, so we must keep looking. And if that is not good enough, then I suggest you look on your own."
"No. Look with me. We'll cover more ground if we split up."
And off Varia went, into the horizon. By then, the sky had turned a bruised purple that blushed darker by the second. Stars were beginning to bleed through, and night was about to fall. All too suddenly, he was alone in a horrible and bloody red meadow searching for someone who could very well be anywhere. Yet he still searched, calling his friend's name every few minutes and only being replied by his own echoes or the distant howls of the nightwolves.
"Where are you, Darius?" he whispered to himself, looking around into the darkness of the empty meadow. There was no Darius there, just loneliness. "Where?"
Closes the Enchanter's Storybook
That was The Enchanter's Storybook: Chapter Seven. Thank you for reading, it means a lot to me. Donate to Nifty. Places Storybook onto the bookshelf, in between Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Lorax
And remember: this very email address can be used to message me about our ideas, plots, comments - anything you have to say on this story, just email me. Even questions, if the need be.
Have an enchanting week, my darlings. Love, your old wizard friend in a moons-and-stars conical hat, The Enchanter.